When I shared an apartment with the former roomie I paid the electric so I could have the big bedroom. We were supposed to switch rooms after six months, but what a pain in the ass, right?

I kept the big room. I bought a humongous bed and I posted flowcharts and lists all over my walls in a checkerboard pattern. Flowcharts, you ask? Why yes. One of my duties when I worked for the global corporation was to clean out the cubicles of severed workers. Laid off, that is. The flowcharts were made by a woman that had serious issues with organization and sequence. She had seven flowcharts for a company Christmas party. One showed the progression from Employees Arrive to Catering Delivery to Santa Visit to Bar Closing to Office Lockup. One list showed all those invited, sorted by department. One flowchart was obviously a plan for her son Rusty's landscaping business. That poor kid probably had a flowchart on his wall that read:

Yes, she loved capital letters. She also loved reproducing her pristine flowcharts on 11x17 Kodak glossy photo paper. I still have them safe in a box for my next apartment.

Shit. I started writing this because of my bed. So I have this huge bed. I lost the box spring on a forest preserve road next to Oakton College when I moved. I didn't strap it down securely. Hell, it should've been in a truck. It went bouncing down the road off the top of the white minivan I'd borrowed. I hastily pulled over, apologized to the terrified driver behind me, and lugged the thing through mudpuddles up to the gate of a forest access road. It was a tall chainlink padlocked shut. I leaned my box spring against it, patted it, nodded, waved goodbye, and went back to the minivan.

In my current apartment I have a very small bedroom. After my dresser, tv stand, and a slim cabinet thingamabobber for books and music and so forth, there isn't much room left. The bed takes all of it, and it sits on the floor. (No box spring, remember? Hence, the frame is collapsed and stored away.) I walk right over it to turn on the light in the corner when I walk in.

This provides a challenge. I like to do pushups, situps, crunches, stuff like that. I stand the mattress up and lean it against the wall. Sometimes it falls on me.

With all this access to my carpet I've noticed that it's really very abrasive. This carpet is sandpaper. It's like steel wool made from fishing line wrapped into tiny little bulbs stuck together. It's been ten years since I was in a school, but I think it's the same weird multicolored yet colorless stain blending plastic shit they have there. If you try to exercise naked on it, the friction will cause it to eat the skin right off your body. I speak from experience.

Now I have a new hobby. I'm tired when I get home and I like to nap. I've found it's fun to lay facedown on it, contorted and bent. I fold my arms under myself and sleep that way. My legs I cross or fold or splay all over. There's no give anywhere on this floor so my body has to conform to a flat surface. With my arms underneath me my joints get stretched nicely, especially at the shoulders.

I wake feeling limber and ready for action. My ligaments get a good rubberband snap stretch. My face is imprinted with tiny worm threadings. These disappear slowly from my nose but quickly everywhere else.

The carpetlike matting also induces heavy sweating. I just lay there and ooze, while in the background, some assholes on ESPN yell about nothing. That's how it was yesterday, at least. I liked the whole thing. When I woke up I did three times my normal workout. I think it was the carpet. I feel nice today.

Comment by bookfraud is right on about getting canned. At least you were able to appreciate the deeply disturbing nature of her neurosis by using her flowcharts as decoration. I fucking hate those things. Something in my head shuts off and my bowels clinch when I notice that a group is communicating mainly through visio files. But I could go on about powerpoints and 7 bullet rules.... often when I hear some comment about this in a staff meeting I think, "I wish I had seven bullets..."

the house i live in was a traditional party house for years. there hasn't been a party here in a while since my last roommate moved out, but the carpet has so many stains on it it looks like some kind of animal print. a cab driver once told me that he used to live here as a part of a hippy commune back when there were such things (i guess there still are). he said they had 20 people living here; i don't think the place has really been cleaned since.